Samsung’s Tiptalk: genius? or another R&D gimmick?

Tiptalk is one of the 3 concept devices Samsung’s Creative Lab displayed at CES 2016. It’s a smart strap upgrade for your regular analogue watch. So remove your traditional strap and put on the Tiptalk, a bluetooth enabled strap.

Interaction with the strap takes place through a button and a row of indicative LEDs. The casing is IP56 certified waterproof. Inside the casing is a Bluetooth radio, 180 mAh battery good for up to seven days of standby time, a full charge on the device gives you about 7 hours of talk-time, and sensors including an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer.

The feature that makes the TipTalk special is when a call comes. The TipTalk vibrates and instead of playing the audio through the speaker, the user presses their fingertip to their ear to hear the sound. Sounding familiar? Yes, its a very similar concept to bone-conduction (used in loads of bluetooth headset such as Jawbone and Motorola accessories) but instead of the bone vibrations, it is the air captured in the ear canal. There’s a microphone in the strap which you speak into, making you feel like US Secret Service every minute of the way.

The device is expected to have a price tag under $100 (Dh367).

The device leaves me with one question, why would I remove my strap on my watch and put on an electronic strap to have a conversation while poking my ear. Think i’m ridiculous? Try it for 5 minutes.